Truly Reformed

Amen to this blogpost by Ray Ortlund.

Wordle is Cool

The Gospel of John

 

 

Tomorrow’s sermon

Click the pics to check out wordle.

Alan and Jerome NBA commercials. *snort* Now all in one convenient location.

Knickerbocker please!

 

BONUS!  Hilarious White Sox Radio Spot

 

We Have A New Statement of Faith

Here it is.

It’s a great improvement over the 1950 version.  Sadly, the amendment to remove the word premillenial was defeated.  I’ll write down some of my thoughts about that next week.

Thirsty Overcomers Will Inherit the Earth (part 1)

Excerpt from a sermon preached in September 1998.

This summer Katie and I drove to Albuquerque, NM for the Free Church National Conference. On the last day of the journey we set out from Wichita, KS and I decided to try to cut the corner by taking two-lane Highway 54 across Western Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma and Texas. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day. You could make an argument that the countryside was desolate, maybe even ugly. But I thought it was incredible. My soul was filled with awe at just the bigness of the Great Plains. There were stretches of road where you could see literally nothing from horizon to horizon. No trees, no grain elevators, not even a cow. I wanted to stop and get out and spin around and get vertigo taking it all in, but it was about 108 degrees outside so we passed on that experience. Same kind of feeling you would get if you were on a boat in the middle of the ocean, except this was an ocean of land. Never been on a boat on the ocean, closest I came was when I was 12 years old we took a ferry across Lake Michigan and we were out far enough that there was nothing but water from horizon to horizon and I remember that was endlessly fascinating to me. It’s that same feeling of infinite space that draws us to lay on the grass and gaze at the stars.

I’ve heard some explain the wonder of that experience by saying that it reminds us of how small we are. But I don’t think that’s it, these experiences don’t make me feel small. Rather, I feel my soul enlarged. This feeling of wonder reminds us that we were made to enjoy something much larger than the things upon which we normally fix our gaze. Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men. We resonate with this feeling of infinite space because we sense something of our destiny. The truth is that you will outlive the stars. When all those stars fizzle out and die, your soul will still be conscious.

There is something ennobling about thinking on eternity. The more frequently and clearly you think about heaven, the more fully human you become. The world doesn’t believe this. The world mocks us when we talk about heaven. We hear phrases like “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by”. or we hear of people who are “so heavenlyminded that they are no earthly good.” I’ve never met a person like that. My experience is that the most heavenlyminded people I’ve met are in fact doing tremendous earthly good for people around them. I’m reading a history of Ireland and the author says of Patrick that he was “a holy man, a visionary for whom there was no longer any rigid separation between this world and the next” and it was precisely because of this vision he was enabled to do a powerful lot of good including opposing the slave trade and reforming some of the horrific practices of pagan Ireland. A person who longs for heaven, who prays for God’s Kingdom to come, is also a person who longs for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. The world desperately needs heavenlyminded people, who march to the beat of a different and heavenly drummer.

Our souls were made to enjoy something much larger than the things upon which we normally fix our gaze. And that’s one of the first impressions you feel upon reading about heaven in Revelation 21-22. Heaven is huge. It is unspeakably vast. It is indescribably enormous. It is the very dwelling place of God. CS Lewis said that heaven makes the whole solar system seem like an indoor affair.

Tell Me What to Study

I leave after church Sunday for a week long study leave. I was going to use the time to prepare for finishing Romans in the fall, but I think I’m just about finished with all the reading for that. I’m very much enjoying reading and re-reading John and will continue to do so next week, but it feels too early to start reading commentaries since it will be a year before I preach it. So what should I study? I’m bored of studying just for the sake of self-improvement. I want to study something that will have practical implications for ministering to others. So I thought I’d ask you. What would you like your pastor to know a little more about by the end of next week? What subject could I study and turn into a Sunday school class or a small group that would interest you?

Another Great Luther Quote

It’s the supreme art of the devil that he can make the law out of the gospel. If I can hold on to the distinction between law and gospel, I can say to him any and every time that he should kiss my backside. … Once I debate about what I have done and left undone, I am finished. But if I reply on the basis of the gospel, “The forgiveness of sins covers it all,” I have won.

What this church needs is a slick ad campaign

I’ve always had an aversion to marketing. I feel dirty advertising the church. Perhaps that’s because much advertising is manipulative and dishonest. But some advertising is surely necessary. We’ve always had a yellow pages ad. We don’t want to misrepresent ourselves and tell people that if they come to our church they’ll get the full service experience that will satisfy their felt needs like they’ve never been satisfied before. But we do need to at least let people know we exist. And there surely are some people out there looking for a church like ours who haven’t found us yet. How can we get the word out to those people? Creative ideas, anyone? Help!

My journal was lost, but now is found

I lost my journal, but after a week of retracing my steps I retrieved it yesterday in the lost and found at Kinko’s. I was very happy to have it back and I read through it again and I noticed a connection between two answered prayers.

On July 3rd, 2006 I prayed Psalm 42:9 “I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” I acknowledged that the enemy of my soul was too strong for me and I asked for deliverance.

On April 4th, 2008 I was reading John 14:14 “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” So I asked him again for deliverance from the enemy.

On both of these occasions I experienced, in a manner that I cannot explain, an assurance that my prayer had been heard and answered and on both occasions a season of marked progress in the pursuit of holiness followed.

I feel I must share this with you because in the past I have preached that I have found the word to be much more useful than prayer in the battle to resist temptation. This is true to a point. When face to face with temptation it helps me to quote a short memorized verse. Praying in that moment I find too amorphous to be very helpful.

And yet the two most memorable experiences of deliverance over the past two years were occasioned by believing prayer. So I re-commend the practice to you. Go ask him for something.

I Was Really Scared

Sunday morning I woke up with chest pains. Nothing severe, I didn’t worry much about it. Monday they were a little worse and they occasionally radiated to the shoulder and jaw. Hmm. I looked online for heart attack symptoms. Some of them fit, but some of them didn’t. For example, it was worse when I bent over and laid down. Heart attacks are supposed to hurt the same regardless of posture. So I continued not worrying…much. I assumed it probably had something do with my asthma, perhaps some upper lung congestion. But I hadn’t had any trouble breathing recently, and my inhaler offered no relief. Tuesday morning it hurt again and my wife insisted I make an appointment with the doctor.

When I called and described my symptoms to the nurse she told me to go to the ER. “What?!” I said. “Heart attacks feel like an elephant is standing on your chest. This feels like a medium-sized rabbit is standing on my chest. And I’ve felt the same dull ache for two days straight. Heart attacks aren’t like that.” “Umm, actually yes, they can be,” she said. Still, I talked her out of making me go to the ER and she made a 10:30 appointment for me that morning.

The doctor looked me over and ordered me an ECG which determined that I wasn’t having a heart attack. It’s a viral inflammation of the chest wall and I’m approved to play in the father-son soccer game tonight with Patrick. I’m feeling good now, but for a couple of hours yesterday I was really scared. It will be interesting to see how much the insurance company pays per second for that less than sixty second test.